On his conceptions, that level of awareness isn't quite required to instantiate consciousness. But this just circles back to the definition problem :lol:

If there is no gap between two instants of time then they lay on the same point. Is this correct or not? — MoK

Another version of why this is incorrect:

A pencil exists at the same instance in time, all along it's length. But that's a continuum, not a set of discreet points appearing at a particular point in time.

different people use different definitions of "consciousness" without clarification. — T Clark

Yes sirr. Huge problem in conversation. But, with enough good faith, I've not found this to be an obstacle as such. At least if you work out that you're talking about two different things, two conversations can be had. Apt here, as one could mean the description you've given (which, I think the problem adheres to, as stated by Chalmers) or the state of being aware of something. The second is useless for this arena, so it's hard to talk at cross-purpsoes once that's established.

It doesn't necessarily apply just to humans or even our near relatives. — T Clark

For sure. Chalmers thoroughly treats this and eventually has to go to that weird proto-panpsychism type of thinking to get a 'by degrees' system that would account for 'consciousness' we see in the world.

Mor-or-less but there is a baked-in continuity that would be missing on a bare conception of "moment - moment - moment" where dashes are arbitrary distinctions. I think the idea is that the interceding 'parts' of the process are the 'reason' for time passing, or some such. That you could having 'something' between two points of 'time'. Which is otherwise pretty baffling as an idea.

Yes - i was just pointing out more clearly this extends in both directions. Dismissing is probably the thing to be guarded against though, i guess, rather than twisting oneself in circles over a nonexistent problem. At least that can be fund, and have auxiliary benefits.

Searle, on the other hand, just doesn't do his job in several areas based on vibe. He literally handwaves away serious issues. That, I think, is a worse outcome. Not enquiring, worse than erroneously enquiring.

Philosophy in a nutshell. :wink: — Tom Storm

Yeeeeah boi. LOL. Except maybe Graham Oppy.

bourgeoise dictating their views to the proletariat because they deem themselves wiser and more worldly. — I like sushi

But...but...they are?

Certainly makes more sense - But i seriously doubt this formulation of soviet Russia.

I doubt it. — Shawn

Which bit?

The rest of this lands in the same category as I assessed in the OP.

Soviet communists were really sincere about their intentions of improving the life of every individual, the collective, that is. Moreso, than any other political system communism was concerned with such an ethos. — Shawn

That does not seem to be either the purpose (other than the (practically speaking) arbitrary claim that it is by various parties) or the outcome. I'm unsure the bolded can be supported in any fashion that isn't fantastical. Particularly as the underlined undermines it. They aren't the same thing.
Perhaps this was the problem.

we should not take all this stuff too seriously — BC

ding ding ding ding ding ding.

is generally hard to overwrite — BC

Seems so, but I've always found this claim dubious. I think it's hard to accept that your view needs rewriting. I don't think rewriting it is difficult (scary, though).

My thoughts are that this is the type of high-school philosophy that leads one to fall into a life of activism instead of growing up into a functional adult.

Those are, clearly, biases. But truly, I see nothing in this that needs any discussion. One eg of why:

If it has been collectively decided to aim for happiness on an collective level, then what meaning could individual happiness mean to anyone? — Shawn

This sentence is a many-more-steps version of "I know you can be underwhelmed, and overwhelmed - but can you just be whelmed?" (technically, you can, but in practice there's an obvious gap that the word doesn't fill because its incoherent).

You could treat that quoted question 'technically' and say something about the relation between an individual and their surrounding collective. But this would do nothing but explain the grammar.

fair enough! I like that :) Thank you mate.

You keep taking the time to treat me like I'm an idiot, and I keep proving you wrong. Is this ever going to change? — Philosophim

I believe somewhere in that insecure mess of a brain of yours — Philosophim

I can practically see you sulking as you type the words out. — Philosophim

If you got over yourself — Philosophim

have a humble conversation — Philosophim

INteresting.

It just seemed that you were framing emotional dispositions as the grounding for moral choices rather than there being no moral choices. — I like sushi

Oh, okay, I see what you mean. That might be a language issue - Emotional dispositions are the only possible grounding for moral choices. But that lives within the vagueries of "moral decision" so probably cannot be adequately defined (in either direction).

Moral (Right for Your Perspective) and Ethical (The Right Objective Implementation). — I like sushi

But this misses that Emotivism is a meta-ethical position. It says that human Ethics are dispositional. That framing Ethics as something objective, under which we must argue for our chosen source (God, Ayn Rand, deontology, utilitarian calc etc...) is wrong ethically. Ethics inform morals - so this ethical position means that all moral choices are in response to one's emotional state which is in turn in response to a moral proposition. You can't have a meta-moral system to explain this, because that's just ethics. And the "ethics" is that it is right to ascribe moral positions to their underlying emotional states. I'm unsure more needs to be said here, but feel free to pick it apart.

For what it's worth, I think people are ethically wrong to enforce their ethical position if their position entails an objective moral outcome. Strange, I know.

Not a Skittles fan, huh? Taste the rainbow, except the rainbow has no colors. — creativesoul

To me, nothing you've used to object to the position has any effect on it. You're, in all cases, bringing the mental phenomenon to a physical fight. The only reason a Red skittle is Red, is because my mind creates a red experience for me in response to a(in this case, a very specific) frequency of light reflected of a cooked sugar surface. It isn't in the Skittle. THat's, again, bizarre.

Just off the cuff absurd conclusions following from the idea that color is nothing more than a mental/psychological event. — creativesoul

Explanation: Nice, thank you
Relevance: None, unfortunately.

It detects what we've named "red" and programmed it to pick up on, based on the frequencies we have decided are the 'red' spectrum pursuant to the experience of Red. Nothing to do with with the frequencies themselves representing anything in experience — creativesoul

I'm also not entirely un-open to the idea that a machine could have 'mental events' in some form that delineates 'mentation' from 'consciousness'. There are bacteria who can react adequately to their environment (and show what would be considered unnatural coherence in those reactions) without any consciousness - but perhaps we have to give them mentation to make sense of it. Idk. It is distasteful to me, but I can't find a reason to just say "No, not that".

There is a further point, and all of your objections rely on it's facticity: the reality that we cannot point out Red without experiencing it. The only reason we could announce that a programme has 'created' Red is because the experience we have corresponds with what we call Red elsewhere. And this was programmed into the software based on the prexisting version of the same correspondence. It is all derived from experience.

There is no part of any of these discussions where colour obtains without experience. I get the feeling this is going to just end up with erroneous exchanges about language use.

When you go to find a trajectory, you still rely on Newtonian mechanics. Is it wrong to rely on things that are sturdy and well-built? — kudos

Not at all, but as you'll have picked up, this is not how i view Hegel :P

Your last paragraph is the same type of muddled i'm getting elsewhere, so I'm unsure how to respond. It seems like a mess of words asking senseless, redundant questions. This isn't meant to be rude - It's most to illustrate that, given my opinion of Hegelian thinking (and my position that it can be shown to be nonsensical) we're not going to get far :P

The range we've named "red" cause us to see red, but there is no red in the range. — creativesoul

No. It causes (in general terms) the sensation we take to be caused by the range on the spectrum. That sensation is termed 'Red'. There is no red in the spectrum. Arguing that there is red in the spectrum is bizarre. If you're not doing so, I am not quite understanding the objection.

Also, if these several string-posts are in response to someone, I'm not seeing hte intermediary posts so sorry if anything is incoherent for that reason. If its just me, also sorry lmao.

Frequencies of light are not color... according to those I'm arguing against. — creativesoul

Yes, that is why my response is a bit of an objection. "colour" formally, is the experience of (sorry, caused by, in most cases) such and such light frequency. That these very rarely vary independently doesn't instantiate a 1:1 match.

My point about the scanner is that it cannot detect colour. Colour is an experience.

I think we're all a little bored and narcissistic. Some of us think /pretend that actually means something. Most of us realise it's a nothing.

As to the rest of your post, it seems to rely on Hegelian concepts that I find totally incoherent:

The finitude of I becomes visible, and approaches the truth of was what we began with, and we experience the circular idea and its universality. — kudos

This says nothing, as far as I can tell. This is just some words describing nothing anyone could put a finger on. "visible" makes no sense here, "the truth of what was" makes no sense here, "we experience the ... idea" makes no sense here, "universality" is out of hte blue.

To be sure, I think Hegel was an eloquent idiot. But that doesn't affect the lack of coherence here.

That's not doing any lifting at all. A scanner can match frequencies of light based on a human programme of light=experience tables.
This doesn't help the problem..

The Scotsmen want their truth back.

Fantômas - Delirium Cordia.

Something of a Magnum Opus for the band. Roughly speaking, the album charts a patient's experience of surgery in a delirious state, rather htan waking consciousness.

which will be coming due to the use of AI. — wonderer1

I don't expect you to be other than analogous to a flat earther when it comes to this subject. — wonderer1

If only there was an emoji to represent eyes being in the back of one's head.

I disagree. For instance, I don't need to know what is happening on the slopes of Mount Everest right now to believe there are some definite events happening on the slopes of Mount Everest right now. — Apustimelogist

I'm not quite seeing where this relates to the contradiction noted? (response to bold below this all)

If we literally cannot know anything about hte intrinsic nature of things, what you think or believe has precisely zero bearing on the potential question: How could you possible confirm that:

there is an objective way the world is — Apustimelogist

If:

science cannot tell us anything about the fundamental "intrinsic nature" of things beyond experience. — Apustimelogist

These are directly in opposition, as best I can tell. The example you gave doesn't seem to approach the problem in any way... Premeptively, if i've missed something key, apologies.

Response to the bolded: That's true - but to be correct you'd have to solve the above. And given you're making a pretty absolute claim here for science establishing a mind-independent, objective world outthere beyond experience.

Similarly, science cannot tell us anything about the fundamental "intrinsic nature" of things beyond experience. — Apustimelogist

I think this is true - but then whence comes:

there is an objective way the world is and the mind is embedded within that — Apustimelogist

These seem to run into each other quite violently...

There is a theory of time (which I've never seen treated properly, but has never been taken seriously either)which states that time sort of flickers the way frames in a film reel do. Infintessimally small and imperceptibly small "cells" of time flash in and out with the gaps between an analogy to 'antimatter' or whatever. It's vague and science-fictiony but most are.

I can't see why we would pursue it other than a hunch, but thought you might like at least an aesthetic frame for considering other options.

A physicalist metaphysician has no problem addressing the philosophical questions he raises every bit as well as a Thomist like Feser. That science is a rational form of inquiry doesn't require a supernaturalist metaphysics to justify; the "causal regularities" he refers to can be accounted for as laws of nature (relations between universals). — Relativist

(not in pursuit of the greater discussion here - I am just motivated to ask prima facie..)
I am unsure these answers can be given as readily as you're putting forward. "Laws of Nature" just refer back to those causal regularities. They aren't actually 'accounted' for beyond that we regularly see stuff happen under certain conditions. It may well be that this is what you're getting at and I'm misreading... Because both we seem to have a similar reaction to THomism, and I agree with your final point there; I am just not seeing how you are actually answering the questions old mate put forward.. (but, that supports your conclusion, so that's fine, im just curious).

LOL, well okay that's fair! I think that's why Chalmers does (and should) get the respect his book actually commands. We don't have much to go on, lol.

Yes, I think this is a serious potentially insurmountable difference in approach. He (we (Wayf and I)) see it; others dont.

Solving a problem that isn't there is always going to look abysmal, but equally would ignoring one that is.

It sounds like you're saying that neuroscience shows that human consciousness doesn't extent beyond the brain. It doesn't show that. — frank

At the absolute minimum, it is stuck at that position. So, I think Michael's position is entirely tenable. Neuroscience doesn't indicate that consciousness extends at all.

No, are you trolling? — jkop

No, I am responding to what you are saying. There's not a lot of point quoting previous statements, and they would contradict what I'm trying to clarify (which is that there are contradictions all through this exchange...)

Why, would you prefer extraordinary conditions? — jkop

I have addressed this and why I've honed in on it. You seem to have missed:

To see it is a biological fact, just how nature works, and some of us may have better eyes than others.
— jkop

This is, in fact, to say there is a 'correct' way of viewing hte world, biologically. Someone looking at 430THz of light, and seeing Blue, is 'wrong' (whether that's a physical aberration or otherwise..). — AmadeusD

If this is the case, then there's a strict contradiction in your approach. You are insinuating there is no 'correct' way for the human vision to apprehend colours, but you want colours to be "out there" independent of our experience? Pls hlp lol.

Fair enough. If you find a glib use of a clearly inapt term "anti-scientific" rather than a bit of fun, I'm unsure where to go :P

And this opens up the possibility of 'consciousness surviving the body" hehehehe. Let's not though..

Ah, fair, that was very much insufficiently clear. Where i put that, I just mean to indicate that we don't know (which ironically, is Carroll's view, elsewhere) and 'miracle' is a placeholder for whatever the answer is...could think here of the breathe-in-breathe-out view of the big bang, but we don't know whether or not that's the case. It would solve the 'miracle' is my point. Anything that answers the question is the 'miracle' until it's found.

Why difficult — jkop

Because of the remainder of my post...

where does that idea come from that there could be a 'correct' mode of seeing? — jkop

The majority of your responses seem to indicate this. That colour is mind-independent and that the eye and mind must be in order to 'accurately' apprehend the 'colour' out there (this is plainly wrong, though) seems to be baked-in to your position on this.

Would you ask if there is a 'correct' mode for digestion? — jkop

Yes. When my tummy is being funny, i digest 'incorrectly' because of an aberration in the alimetary canal somewhere. Generally, these can be found, diagnosed and treated (though, that's not relevant). This can be applied to vision. I'm asking if you position is that this applies to colour. It seems you want to say no, but...

To see it is a biological fact, just how nature works, and some of us may have better eyes than others. — jkop

This is, in fact, to say there is a 'correct' way of viewing hte world, biologically. Someone looking at 430THz of light, and seeing Blue, is 'wrong' (whether that's a physical aberration or otherwise..).

colour perception is all about neuroscience — jkop

Are you suggesting that the science of vision doesn't explain Red? Then how can you claim what you've claimed?

the colour is the bundle of lights and pigments that emerge as a colour when seen under ordinary conditions — jkop

I smell Tuna...

To some degree, sure, but framing it that way is some extremely bad interpretation. That there are gaps in knowledge doesn't require invoking God. But it does require some novel thinking, at times. That's all I'm indicating. It's not Carroll's field... If God comes out of that exercise, i'd be a surprised as you.

In other words, isn’t being the same person throughout space and time an essential element of what it is to being a human? — Thales

I think we'd have to solve the fundamental problem: What does personal identity consist in?

There are various views:
The bodily continuity view (think: body=identity)
The psychological continuity view (think: memory/disposition=identity)
The further fact view (think: soul or a materialist equivalent=identity)

They all fail to describe much of anything we take to be our 'identity'. I think most people intuitively take the further fact view. But it is very, very hard to maintain outside of strictly religious, supernatural frameworks.

I'm unsure Zeno has much to say here. His paradox you've picked out takes time to be made up of indivisible points which doesn't seem to be the case at all.


There is the additional view that the above is nonsense, and we must only consider personal identity to be a set of dispositions, arbitrary or curated, in a person's behaviour. Your 'identity' could be 'demisexual aromatic nonbinary transgender neurospicy Unicornkin" in this sense though, so I think it's a cop-out to the actual problem of figuring out what makes 'me' 'me' over time.

On order to take metaethics seriously, one has to look, not to the concept, the understanding's counterpart to the living actuality, but to just this actuality. The proof for this lies in the pudding: putting one's hand of a pot of boiling water, for example: NOW you know the REAL ground for the moral prohibition against doing this to others. — Constance

This is a non sequitur for the ages. I did warn about this - continental philosophy is rhetoric only. That's why teenage boys are still finding Satre interesting. We all go through a death on the way adulthood - pretending these self-involved, preening narratives are somehow extrapolable is a serious mistake, and probably a good portion of why this type of 'philosophy' is both derided readily, and defending vehemently. But this is like defending Christianity because it pulled you thruogh your divorce. Arbitrary.

but there is no (ontological? metaphysical?) relationship. — ENOAH

There isn't even a moral relationship. It's just a confirmation of the intuition that one probably shouldn't boil one's hand. That isn't moral.

Fair enough!

the colour is the bundle of lights and pigments that emerge as a colour when seen under ordinary conditions — jkop

Hmmm this seems a really, really difficult account to accept. Is this to say that there is a 'correct' mode of seeing, and anyone who sees 430THz and does not accept they are seeing 'Red' is objectively wrong, or has retarded(in the medical sense) vision?

Unfortunately for parts of your account, there are some fairly glaring issues. Michael has picked up on one (but I think been less-than-direct about it):

These colours are percepts, they occur when the visual cortex is active, and all of this happens when awake as well. — Michael

If your take is correct, then the same experience is being had by the mind when dreaming, even if this is 'artificial' according to your view(memory, or some such being utilized by the unconscious mind). How is the colour actually outside the mind, when there is no possible way to even indicate that it is 'the colour' without this mind-bound experience?
I don't personally have a fundamental issue with saying 'colours' are simply (arbitrarily) defined as their wavelength of light, rather than any experience they invoke. But this doesn't seem to be how the word is used in every-day language.